Posts Tagged ‘license’

The WordPress developers have just clarified its license as “GPL version 2 or later,” putting an end to some frequent confusion. WordPress contains libraries which are licensed under the GPL “version 2 or any later version,” which obviously excludes version 1 of the GPL. Here is the reality: the GPL version 1 is effectively irrelevant. It hasn’t been a commonly used license since before Matt Mullenweg was in third grade! Clarifying WordPress as being licensed under the GPL “version 2 or later” resolves these niggling library licensing concerns or ambiguities, and clarifies where WordPress stands. As with any licensing discussion, the post has generated some interesting comments, which makes for some entertaining (if not educational) weekend reading.

Thesis has officially adopted a split GPL license, putting an end to the explosive debate between WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and Thesis developer Chris Pearson which launched a community-wide discussion on the GPL and WordPress themes. To clarify the split GPL license, Chris Pearson adds, “the PHP is GPLv2 and the CSS, JS, and images are proprietary.” Specifically, this means that Thesis no longer violates the GPL of WordPress and the several plugins that Thesis was based on. Matt Mullenweg was thrilled to hear the news, replying with, “Now, back to work. This has taken a lot of my time over the past few days and was going to consume more if it went forward.” It is unknown if this will have any affect on Mr. Pearson’s business. While the split GPL license now allows the core of Thesis be redistributed by a third-party either free or for a fee, the […]

Yesterday, I wrote about a problem Matt had about the GPL license with the Thesis Theme. Though I am not biased and seriously do not want to get into an argument about it, let me put forth an argument that I think is really worth thinking about.

Not too long ago, I published a post which dove into the controversial subject of comment ownership and I must say, you guys and gals came up with quite a bit of discussion points. In that post, here is how I described my position on the matter: I don’t believe a commenting bill of rights needs to be created in which all blogs should follow. However, I do think that each blogger should create and make publicly accessible a commenting policy. This policy should clearly explain what you as the blog author will do with comments posted on your site, who retains ownership of those comments and explain circumstances which would require you to edit an end user’s comment. For those of you that agree, I’d like to draw your attention to Alex King’s Comment License WordPress plugin. This plugin makes it as easy as 1 2 3 to add […]

About the Author

James

James began using WordPress in 2004. Being new to WordPress (and blogging in general), he quickly found the WordPress Support Forums and basically never left. James currently resides in sunny Southern California, where he enjoys bringing happiness to millions of WordPress.com users.